There are known carburetors intended for the supply of LPG or other types of gas to internal combustion engines.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,511,286 describes a carburetors for an internal combustion engine supplied with gas, comprising a plurality of pressure reduction stages. In this way the gas, stored in liquid form in high-pressure containers, is brought to a pressure suitable for mixing with air by passing through the various stages.
Further examples of similar carburetor are described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,005,603 and U.S. 2012/0247435.
These carburetors, in particular, may be intended for the modification of engines originally designed to be supplied with petrol, or with liquid fuels in general.
In these cases, in order to modify the engine, the carburetor originally used, designed for supplying a petrol and air mixture, is replaced with a carburetor suitable for use with LPG or other gaseous fuel.
However, the known solutions have not proved to be particularly suitable for use in the modification of existing engines, because the LPG or other similar gaseous fuel is contained in pressurized containers, and pressure reduction stages must be provided to enable these solutions to be used in internal combustion engines.
Owing to the presence of these stages, and the need to provide adequate safety devices, the dimensions and overall volumes of these carburetor for LPG are such that they are difficult to adapt for use in existing engines.
Furthermore, the operating conditions in many applications are particularly exposed to dust and other types of contaminant, and in these cases the known carburetors for gaseous fuels are subject to malfunction or prove unsuitable in other ways.
The fundamental technical problem of the present invention is therefore to provide a carburetor for gaseous fuels whose structural and functional design is such that all the aforementioned difficulties of the cited prior art can be overcome.
This problem is resolved by a carburetor according to Claim 1.
Preferred characteristics of the invention are defined in the dependent claims.
The discovery on which the present invention is based enables internal combustion engines with carburetors supplied with petrol to be converted in a simple and effective way so that they can be supplied with gaseous fuels. Additionally, the carburetor according to the present invention has excellent characteristics of safety and reliability.